The cost of living

Property in Dubai is the fifteenth most expensive in the world with an average price tag of $7,151 per square metre, a new study claims.

But it is still cheap compared to Monte Carlo where a top-end apartment costs on average $47,578 per square metre making it almost seven times as much as Dubai according to calculations made by arabianbusiness.com news site.

Property in Moscow, which came in second place, costs $20,853 per square metre, followed by London at an average of $20,756.

At the other end of the scale, Cairo was found to be one of the cheapest cities in the world, with a high-end apartment there costing an average of only $574 per square metre.

Property research group Global Property Guide collected the data based on the average price of a 120 square metre high-end used apartment in the city centres of more than 110 cities around the world during 2008. The US dollar exchange rate used is that of January 27, 2009.